[MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
Maybe in an everything-is-connect-to-everything sort of 
way.  This battle between the collective and the individual seems a 
waste of time.  If the individual is an illusion, and it is, then the 
collective is a group of illusions.

[Arlo]
Absolutely. Which is why I've said many, many times it is never 
"individuals v. collectives", that's just talk-radio blather. What it 
is is about activity, the activity of "individuals within 
collectives". One theory I am fond of is that of "Activity Theory", 
derived from the work of Vygotsky, that looks at the interactive 
dynamics deriving from "individuals within group using resources and 
constrained by rules working towards the creation of objects". A 
common diagram of human activity is this:

http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2004/proceedings/symposia/symposium7/mcateer_marsden_files/image005.jpg

Thus human interactions are "understand human activities as complex, 
socially situated phenomena" (Wikipedia) rather than the polarized 
"subjectivism" or "objectivism" of traditional Western thought.

[Marsha]
The patterns in the Intellectual Level seem to function, as Peter has 
suggested, more to solve problems by manipulating symbols in a more 
deliberate manner.

[Arlo]
I've suggested before that a good way to frame the 
social-intellectual distiction is not in "symbol/no-symbol" but that 
the emergence of the intellectual level stems from the time when 
wo/man started thinking about symbols as objects in themselves. That 
is, certainly the social level is bemarked by the advent of symbolic 
manipulations, indeed I'd argue that the dialogic formation of symbol 
systems is the point of emergence of the social level. But as our 
symbol systems evolved in complexity, wo/man eventually began 
investigating symbols as objects of inquiry. We began "using symbols 
to examine symbols". At the social level, wo/man agreed to term 
"blue" to refer to certain patterns of experience. At the 
intellectual level, wo/man asked "what is blueness? where does it 
come from? is it universal? is it in my head or out in nature?"

Thus I would not say its a "more deliberate" way of manipulating 
symbols, social level symbolic use is also very deliberate. When I 
use language to ask my grocery if he has any organic apples, I am 
manipulating symbols very deliberately. When I think about the 
category "apple" and what it is, and what it is not, and why, I am 
also manipulating symbols very deliberately, its just that I've made 
"appleness", a symbol, the object of my inquiry. Math is a great 
example. At the social level, wo/man first came up with symbols to 
describe multiple occurances, such as "one" or "three". At the 
intellectual level, these symbols ("one" "three") became 
objects-in-themselves, abstracted from experience, and people were 
able to build elaborate symbolic relational systems. That is, when 
"one" ceased to be a modifer for "apples" (one apple) and became a 
real thing in and of itself.

You know, thinking about "wo/man" and the wife-totting pioneers of 
yore, there are many examples of gender-patriarchy reification in 
language. Consider that when addressing a group of males, one could 
begin "hey guys", and when addressing a group of males and females 
one could begin "hey guys", and even when addressing a group of 
females it is common to begin "hey guys", but this is completely 
non-reversible. You could address of group of females "hey gals", but 
for a mixed gender group or all male group this would be taken as 
near offensive, if not ridiculing. But nearly everyone, from males to 
females, adopts this convention as normal.